Senior Official: Iran Not to Stop Military Progress

Secretary of Iran’s Expediency Council (EC) Mohsen Rezayee underscored the country’s high missile power, and said Tehran will further enhance its defensive military program.

“Iran’s military power is growing and progressing every day considering the precision-power, quality and the standards that we should witness in a missile,” Rezayee, also former top commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), said on Monday.

“Iran never stops its military progress and doesn’t take order from anyone. We don’t fear any threats and Iran’s goal is establishment of full security for the people,” he added.

Elsewhere, he referred to the situation of the ISIL in Iraq and Syria, and said, “By losing Mosul and the last bases in Aleppo, the ISIL is fully collapsing.”

In relevant remarks on Sunday, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani stressed that the country has increased its deterrence and defense power by developing different state-of-the-art missiles.

“Iran’s indigenized missile power has been developing for years based on the country’s need to create a deterrence power,” Shamkhani told reporters in the Northeastern city of Mashhad.

Noting that Iran has reinvigorated the precision-striking power, range and destruction power of its missile throughout years, he said, “Today, it (the missile program) is considered as one of the pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s power.”

Also, last month, Chief of Staff of Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri underlined his country’s high missile power one day after the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) launched missile strikes against the ISIL bases 700km away in Syria.

“Iran is among the world’s big powers in the missile field,” General Baqeri said, addressing a meeting in Tehran on June 19.

He stressed the arrogant powers’ weakness in confrontation with Iran, and said, “They don’t have the capability to engage in clashes with us for now and of course, we don’t intend to involve in clashes with them but we are in permanent rivalry with them in different fields, including the missile sector.”

The IRGC launched 6 missile strikes at ISIL centers in Syria’s Deir Ezzur in retaliation for the June 7 twin terrorist attacks in Tehran, it said in a statement issued on June 18, adding that the mid-range ballistic missiles were fired from bases in Western Iran and flew through Iraq’s airspace before hitting the targets in Syria.